EXCLUSIVE: Outgoing BC Conservative president 'grateful' for opportunity to serve, still 'rooting for' party

As president of the BC Conservatives, Aisha Estey oversaw the party's rise from irrelevance to official opposition, and all that came afterwards.

On Wednesday, after more than three years in the role, she stepped down.

Following the news, Sitka Media's Jarryd Jäger caught up with Estey to hear more about her time as an executive.

"I initially started this whole venture as a favour to Aaron Gunn — a really close friend of mine," she said. "I thought it would be a good thing on the resume, and I was pretty young at the time so I thought you know this will be really good experience, but I had no expectations as to what it would turn into and then within a year."

Estey explained that as the only lawyer on the board, she was asked to run for president.

"I think it's important in life to say yes to every opportunity," she said, "so I said yes, and it just kind of snowballed from there into what we ended up accomplishing in the last couple years."

Estey noted that despite some "tumultuous times," she "would not have traded the experience for the world."

"I'm pretty proud of my judgment," she added, "even though some decision-making might've seemed maybe a bit bold at times, I feel like we grew the party as much as we possibly could have during my time there."

Estey said what she'll remember most is "the ability to work with really great people," noting that colleagues like Angelo Isidorou, Connor Gibson, Sharon White, Troy Lanigan, Harman Bhangu, Sasha Peters — to name a few — "made the hard times really worth it."

"We had a really great board, especially in these last few months, and it functioned very professionally," she added, "but then the times it didn't, you learn to work with maybe some challenging personalities and that made for some exciting and memorable board meetings."

When asked what her best memory at president was, Estey pointed to the 2024 election.

"Working with everyone who came in from across the country because they believed in what our party was trying to do here was amazing," she said, "and those relationships will last a lifetime. We had really long hours, crisis after crisis every day, and that experience was particularly unique."

When it comes to regrets, Estey said there "might be a tweet or two that got a little impassioned."

"I don't think I've suffered any terrible consequences from any tweets, but there might be a couple that I would take back."

So what's next for Estey?

"Part of stepping away from this is just to allow the space in my life for something new to come forward," she said. "Seeing with FIFA and sports how amazing that was for the city, I could see myself trying to get involved in a board that maybe does some some community events in promoting the city and making Vancouver fun again."

Estey said the World Cup brought back memories of the 2010 Olympics, and reiterated that "it would be so awesome to be a part of an organization that promotes more of that in Vancouver, because it's in such an exceptional city and it should be really fun and there should be things going on all the time."

"Overall I'm very grateful and humbled by my time and experience and ability to have done that in my career," Estey concluded. "Lots of lessons learned. I obviously wish nothing but the best for the party and will always be rooting for them and everyone there — and we need them to get this NDP out of here. That hasn't changed for me at all, so I'm still gonna be rooting for them for sure to get that done."

The BC Conservatives announced that Mauro Francis will be taking over as president.

In a statement, he thanked Estey for her service, and wished her the best.

His sentiments echoed those of Leader Kerry-Lynne Findlay.